Wow, where did 2011 go? It seems like the months flew past like weeks and now its nearly 2012. Time, just, to look back at the past year from a (not just CAD) bloggie perspective:
Best Blog Event:
Autodesk University is always an awesome event, a chance to meet fellow bloggers and readers. However, this year I was impressed with a couple of local events hosted by AEC Systems & Salesoft CAD Solutions. Although the format differed both featured applications (mostly Autodesk 2012), customer stories with and a chance for the local CAD community to mix. It gave Kiwis who cant get to AU (which is a big commitment) a taste of what they are missing
Best Comment:
I didn't pick one this year but appreciate seeing the likes of Guy Robinson, Scott Sheppard, Phil Bernstein, Shaan Hurley, Lynn Allen & Earl Kubaskie contributing. I don't get many real comments (you should see all the spam TypePad handles) but appreciate them all.
Best Podcast:
I only recently discovered Oh No, Ross & Carrie! They are L.A. based and investigate topics of interest to skeptics by experiencing them. The resulting podcasts are entertaining, informative and thought provoking.
Oh No, Ross and Carrie! - www.ohnopodcast.com
Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on spirituality, fringe science and the paranormal (from a scientific, evidence-based standpoint), but dive right in by joining religions, attending spiritual events, undergoing “alternative” treatments, partaking in paranormal investigations, and more. At Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, we show up, so you don’t have to.
Biggest Surprise?
A few of my AU 2010 images were used by other publications but I was very happy to have this photo, taken in Sydney on the way to AU, appear on the July 2011 AUGIWorld Cover.
Busiest Month:
March was the busiest month but only marginally as traffic was pretty constant over the year. One milestone (kilometrestone?) was seeing the millionth page view on my CAD Blog. In fact my CAD & Personal blogs are approaching 1.4 Million page views. If you told me that when I started back in 2004 I wouldn't have believed it could ever happen. Its been an amazing and surprising journey.
Blog Related Concern:
Sadly it is SAYmedia.com. Videoegg acquired TypePad’s parent company Six Apart in 2010 forming “SAY Media”. While they promised to maintain and enhance TypePad there hasn’t been much sign of enhancement. I have no problems with the service, performance and support but would like to see more development. TypePad is getting pretty stale with little change to the tools (other than templates). After they shut down Vox I had hoped to see some of its media features (integration and galleries) appear in TypePad but no sign of that yet.
Best Blog Tool:
After considering getting an iPad I opted for a netbook and have been very happy with it. The main reason is it fits into my Windows based workflow. Posts are composed in Live Writer, local drafts and resources are sync'd between my desktop & netbook with Live Mesh and have all my ActiveWords for folder shortcuts, web navigation and text substitution.
It means “heavy” stuff like cad screenshots, screen recording can be done on the desktop, with posts composed there or on the netbook. You could do this with cloud based storage but the Live Mesh local/cloud mix means offline writing is no problem. I wrote some of my AU posts on the aircraft over the Pacific far from a web connection!
After looking at HP, Toshiba & Acer I went for a Samsung NC110 machine. They were similar but the main reason was it came with 2GB ram (vs. 1GB) and I liked the keyboard action & layout. I used it, in combination with my iPhone, at Autodesk University and found the performance and battery life (up to 10 hours real world) more than adequate.
“Doh!” of the year:
Some may think it was the 8.16 launch but for me it was an AutoCAD 2012 feature and the resulting post. I nearly, very nearly, submitted a bug report related to the AutoCAD text window missing scroll bars which were there!
Happy New Year!
Thanks for visiting, reading and coming back. Happy New Year, lets see what 2012 brings!
Boring Blog Stats (for me!)
TypePad Community: 74 [74] Following | 153 [106] Followers [ ] = 2010 figures
Twitter: 356 [281] Following* | 981 [824] Followers | 93 [88] Listed
* I’m also following another 1,200 or so just using lists.
RobiNZ CAD Blog
Posts: 1899 [1811] | Comments: 1515 [1440] | Pages: 8 [8]
Page Views: Total: 1,043,433 [906,273] | Average Per Day: 369.36 [368.10]
FeedBurner Subscribers: 6567 [4023]
Most Popular Post from 2011: AutoCAD Stacked Dimension Override Text – Popular in spite of the new AutoCAD 2012 dimension text editor making the old cheat codes history.
Most visited post of 2011 was from 2008: Revit and AutoCAD's Visual Styles - A SketchUp alternative? – Same as last year, still no idea why although I wonder if all the product names in the title pick up lots of searches?
RobiNZ Personal Blog
Posts: 1858 [1777] | Comments: 965 [921]
Page Views: Total: 340,827 [294,119] | Average Per Day: 136.99 [138.41]
FeedBurner Subscribers: 109 [158]
Most Popular Post from 2011: The Ferrari Pinin Sedan Concept Car for sale (without my interior) – An old concept car sale and my old school project got a few views.
Most visited post of 2011 was from 2005: Auckland City for Microsoft Flight Simulator - Real New Zealand – Same as last year. Again it’s either lots of Flightsim fans or, more likely, searches because of the Auckland City/Super City elections.
